Living Beyond Your Regrets | Starting Over (Part 5)

My name is Steven and lead pastor Madison church. So glad you're joining us today as we are wrapping up our series starting over, and I wonder if you can relate to this? Have you ever regretted something before you even did it? Have you ever regretted something? Before you even did it? I'm sure you have.

I mean, we all have, haven't we, it's late in the day, and you're starting to get a little hungry.

When you remember that bag of mixed salad that's in the fridge, I mean, you're gonna eat healthier, right? It's 2021, it's a new year and, and you're resolving to be healthier and to eat better. And you sit there and as you think about that salad, your mind drifts a little bit to the Taco Bell, that's just down the road a little bit.

And instead of doing what you should do, which is having the mix the salad, you jump in the car at midnight, and go to Taco Bell. And you know, as you're driving the Taco Bell, you should not be doing this, you know, it doesn't make sense.

It's going to cost you money, it's not going to make you feel better. And you know, you're going to regret this Taco Bell run.

So you go to Taco Bell, you put in the order, you eat the food, it's delicious, of course.

And then for the next few hours, you regret that decision again, or if you're unlucky, it's the next few days that you'll regret that decision. Right? We can regret things before they happen. I can remember a personal story of when I was a kid, and this happened to me when I knew I had done something that I shouldn't have any come it was the first fight that I've ever been in. First. And probably the last many of you guys know that I'm a big football fan. I love football. I love the game. And I always have I can't remember a time in my life where I didn't love football. And I didn't love the Green Bay. Packers were all very sad about what happened last Sunday, we should have gone to the Super Bowl. But in typical Packers fashion, we blew that.

All right back on subject here is I love football. And so when I was a kid, I would take a football down to a field there are a few of them by my house and I would just start playing or just throw the ball in the air. And eventually what happened this is before cell phones, not that long before cell phones but before cell phones and the kids around the field would see that I was playing and they would come and join me and eventually we would have a pickup game of football going we did this all the time.

It was so much fun. And one particular game that we're playing, I scored a touchdown.

Again, this is a meaningless game amongst kids in a field on on a Saturday, when an opponent a kid on the other team ran up to me and he spit on me. Now I knew at that point in time, he was upset that I scored a touchdown. I knew at the time this was a very meaningless game.

And yet I knew I was going to regret what I did. Next because I didn't just walk away I didn't do the mature thing. I was 12 years old. And what happened next is a blur kind of seems like a dream. But what I do remember happening was my fist hitting him in the face him falling down to the ground Now relax. He was okay. I was 12 years old and I weighed 90 pounds. He was bigger than me.

Okay, so it was fine.

But immediately regretted that I knew I was I should have done it. I knew I was going to regret it. And I ran home from the football field because this kid had a much older and larger brother who I knew could pound me into the ground. And I worried about this for years.

I've regretted it for years going into junior high and high school because his brother was so much bigger and older than me. There did come a point in high school where he became so large I was fairly certain that I cannot walk him okay. And so that's when the regret finally went away.

But hey, regrets happen like that, right? We know we're going to regret something before we do it regrets are just like that.

And as I mentioned, today is the last day of a long five part series A we have called starting over and it's such an important content because the premise of the series is that we all have regrets. We talked about different types of regrets that we all have, for example, there are regrets of action. These are things that you wish you had not I wish I had not done that. I wish I had not said that regrets of action. Well, the same coin, just the other side of there are regrets of inaction. Those are the situations we wish we had said something now wish I would have spoken up. Those are the situations that I wish I would have done something and not been so passive. And maybe perhaps the worst regrets in our lives, the ones that staying the most or regrets of reaction. no fault of your own. Something bad was done to you by someone else. And you deeply regret that.

And we so long, I mean we ache to make it right again, we long to just blot out those three Whether it was last hour last week, last month or last year, perhaps it was last century, we just long to be able to live beyond our regrets. And because we you know, this, if it were easy, we wouldn't need to talk about it right? If this were easy stuff, we wouldn't have to talk about it. But what what happens is, is the reason it does get so difficult is because we get sucked into what we've been calling the sorry, cycle.

And the sorry, cycle is, you know, there's that regret, I wish I hadn't I wish I had, I wish they hadn't. And that's the longing part of it. We long that that hadn't happened. And longing leads to more regret.

Because I wish I hadn't done that. And then I miss more opportunities, because I was longing that I hadn't done that we get stuck in the cycle going back and forth. And so the question that we have to ask is, is it possible to get unstuck?

Is it possible to break out of the cycle? And yes, it was.

That's what we talked about the last three weeks. And we said that there were a three step process, or there is a three step process that can help every single person, regardless of situation or circumstances, get unstuck. And the first thing that we had to do, to get out of the sorry, cycle is to recognize our regrets, we have to recognize them. And I talked about how we just needed to stop avoiding our regrets, stop avoiding it, recognize it, call it by name and confront it. And then john talked about how after we recognize it, we need to release it, we need to release our regrets. And then last week, Jason talked about how when we come to recognize our regrets, and we've come to release our regrets, like God can redeem our regrets. And what this looks like in the sorry, cycle is, there's regret and longing and regret and more longing. But what happens when we start to break out of this is that we say there's a regret, and I'm going to recognize it, and then that regret, I'm going to release and then that regret, God is going to redeem and all sudden, there is no cycle anymore, because we've removed regret from the cycle all together. And what happens when we do all three of these successfully is complete life transformation, not on our own, because you know that a very important part of breaking out of the cycle is letting God work. So we don't do it on our own. But through this with God, our lives are transformed.

throughout this series, we've been following. Greg, who's a guy from Chicago who has a bad addiction. And every time he kind of gets close to maybe living beyond his addiction, and living beyond all of the regrets he has, he gets pulled back. But today we're going to see a different side of the story, which is what happens when we put all three of these together.

Let's hear from Greg now. So I remember racking my car. And the next thing I know I come to, and I have no idea where I am done.

I'm looking around and I know I'm in some sort of hospital, I asked the guy where it was one of the patients and he told me I was in the state mental ward.

And I just remember thinking, oh god, I gotta get out of here.

And as I'm laying in this hospital bed, and the nurses are asking me to, to, you know, move upstairs into the the ward again, my only motivation at that point is I didn't want to hurt people. And I didn't want to hurt my family. I didn't want to hurt my fiance. I didn't want to hurt strangers. I just didn't want to hurt people with my life anymore. So I made a decision to go upstairs to accommodate their desires into the into the mental ward.

But I made up my mind that the minute I get out that I'm going to, to take my own life, that's my worldview. At that point, I'm in a mental ward. And I know I'm going to take my life. And I know there is no way out. So as I'm sitting in this, this mental institution, and there was a woman who obviously had more issues going on than just substance abuse, but she was coloring and she broke her crayon. And then breaking that crunch, she started shrieking and thought the world was ending and her life was over. And I was trying to explain to her that, you know, it's just a crayon and that the world's not ending and her life's not over. In that moment. It was as if God had just whispered to me that it might not be over for me. And that was the first glimmer of hope that I had felt in years. I mean years. The mentor offered to transfer me down to a rehab facility in Florida, even though I'd been to a million treatment centers, and I didn't think they could help me. That little voice of God that said, maybe it's not quite over for you either gave me just enough willingness to say, Okay, I'm alone in Florida.

Every belonging I have did actually fit in a garbage bag.

I'm kind of a mess at that point. So even though I've hoped my life I shouldn't have hope.

So if you look at the state of my life, when I'm in Florida, I'm homeless, I'm jobless, I have a broken shoulder. And this charity of the treatment center is going to run out soon. And, and then what I have nowhere to go and nothing to do. And so I shouldn't have hope. But God just has a way of doing some pretty amazing things. And I remember sitting, I was down there, and I was at this bus stop realizing that I can't fix all the things that I've done, and I can't fix my own life. I also realized that maybe that's not what living is about. The point I'd missed the whole time, throughout these years of even trying to follow Christ is that it's really not about me, maybe it's all about God. And so maybe what I can do, instead of regret all that I've done, use that experience to be able to relate with others, and maybe help show them the way out the same way that someone brought me out. So I came up, and I was able to reconcile things with my family. And I went to try and make things right with my ex. Obviously, that went well, because today we're married, we have two children, a four year old daughter and a two year old son, the biggest thing that starting over means to me is the willingness to, to not just let go of the past, because it's not people always say that you got to let go and move on. But you can't forget what's happened. So I don't think that's the answer.

When I think about starting over, what it's meant for me is to be willing to let go instead of the past let go of what the future is supposed to look like this whole idea that I need to that I need to know the outcome of how to fix things, and say, Okay, I am a drug addict. I did lose everything. Like I was this ugly person, I had these hard things happen. I did these terrible things. God, how can we use those to, to some sort of amazing story. And you can't help but root for guys like Greg who are fighting and trying to be different and who are trying to be better. And as we've said, In this series, if this stuff was easily practice, we wouldn't need to talk about it. As a matter of fact, I want to wake you up a little bit, perhaps you think that you need this content, perhaps you don't think you think this is rather shallow, I want to assure you that it's not, it is easily understood. Getting over your regrets is easy in theory. But what makes it hard is to actually put these things that we're talking about in practice.

You see, the easy part is saying this is what you got to do.

recognize your regret, release your regret, like God redeem it.

But the hard part is to actually follow through. Why is that the hard part? What's the hard part because frankly, it's just easier to ignore our regrets, instead of recognizing our regrets. It's easier to ignore our regrets than recognizing that. And there are endless reasons on white, why you might ignore your regrets, perhaps we just don't understand how important it is. To do this to do the things that we're talking about. We don't recognize how important it is to recognize our regrets. We keep putting it off, I'll do I'll deal with this at a better time and at a different time. But you know, that better time never seems to come around or we don't think that it's important. Rather, we know that we have a regret. We shouldn't have done that or said that. But you know what, it's just not important. It's not a big deal.

That's what we tell ourselves, when actually, it is a big deal.

Our regrets are a big deal. And they are worth recognizing, perhaps we're too lazy to do the hard work. We know that digging into our past and looking at our regrets is going to be a lot of work. And so rather than do that we just kind of numb out we binge eat Doritos while we binge watch Netflix because that's easier. Perhaps it's because we're too busy. The pain of the past is too much to deal with.

So I'm just going to keep going and going and going, I'm going to go to work, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do that. And I'm going to keep my schedule completely full. So I never have to sit around and be bored and think about and reflect all of the regrets that I have. So I stay too busy.

It could be that you're too discouraged. To begin the process of recognizing your regret, you're pessimistic that even bringing them up what good is going to come out of it. We assume that our regrets are way too big. regrets are way too painful and you just don't want to deal with that.

You are not alone.

Okay? You are not alone.

Recognizing a regret is painful.

I'm not trying to insinuate that it's not. That's the hard part of putting what we're talking about into practices that regrets are painful. Sometimes it can be like opening up an old wound that didn't heal, right.

Some of us know that. Okay, so you hurt yourself and rather than going to the doctor's office or seeing someone who knows what they're doing, we just try to take care of it ourselves. And perhaps it gets infected or perhaps it doesn't heal And then we have to go to the doctor because now it went from a little thing to a life threatening thing. And then we go to the doctor and we got to get treated now for an infection, or we have to have it a bone re broken or to set it right. Because we didn't let it heal. So yes, it would have hurt to have dealt with that to begin with, but it hurts more later.

And that is absolutely what ignoring our regrets is like, it might feel less bad now. But it will feel way worse later.

And risking in the short term pain as well worth the long term reward.

Dealing with your child's bad attitude and destructive behavior when they're little may hurt now, but it will hurt less than dealing with your adult child's bad attitudes and destructive behavior by putting it off. dealing with issues that you and your spouse have right now might hurt a lot right now.

But it will hurt less than a divorce or an infidelity.

Dealing with an issue in your neighborhood in your workplace.

Or maybe even your church might hurt a little bit now. But it'll hurt way less. Over time. Paul from the Bible could have turned a blind eye from his regret Paul, who starts a ton of churches, Paul who reaches out to the Gentiles Paul who writes a ton of the New Testament. He could have ignored his regrets, but he did not he did have plenty to regret. So he had a lot of reasons to ignore his regrets he chose not to.

When he writes the letters that we have today in our New Testament, Paul constantly talks about the bad things, the things that he regretted, and they don't weigh him down. They weren't a set back. But rather they were a launching pad into his ministry, he might have been tempted to hide his regrets, but he did it. I love how he describes his ugly past in Acts.

He says I persecuted the followers of the way those were Christians, hounding some to death, arresting both men and women and throwing them in prison, the high priest and the whole council of elders can testify that this is so far I received letters from them to our Jewish brothers in Damascus, authorizing me to bring the followers of the way from there to Jerusalem in chains to be punished. He owns it. This is what I did. He doesn't try to sugarcoat it. And he says, you know, I'm not the only one who knows this. There are tons of witnesses, and he summarizes it even more to the church in Corinth. He says, I am the least of all apostles. In fact, I'm not even worthy of being called an apostle, after the way I persecuted God's Church. Here's what I love about this. Paul says I did bad things. And because of those bad things, I shouldn't be here. Because of my regrets. I should not be here doing the things that I am doing. But God changes that. But God gets a hold of our regrets.

They don't have to be setbacks, they can be launching pads. And if you and I ever hoped to start over, we have to recognize our regrets. gotta quit ignoring them, we have to confront them.

We cannot move on. Until we deal with our regrets. Don't give into the temptation of not recognizing your regrets. Okay, so why is some of this content easy to understand, but hard to put into practice? Well, because it's easier to hold on to our regrets, instead of releasing them. In some cases, regrets are like painful wounds, scars and injuries. But in another sense that our regrets can kind of be like a blanket, I mean, kind of something that we find comfort in holding on to it's like we can control it. And often our feeling sorts of regrets. What happens when we hold on to them is that it gets twisted up in our minds to the point where we don't want to give up our regrets. We don't want to confront that anymore. And so we're just hanging on to it. I don't know if you've ever heard of Stockholm Syndrome. Stockholm Syndrome is this condition in which hostages develop a psychological bond with their captors during captivity, and it's a term that was first used back in the 1970s. When for hostages were taken during a bank robbery in Stockholm, Sweden. The hostages get this guy the hostage is defended their captors after being released. So hostages would not go to court to testify against them because they had developed a psychological bond with those who held them captive with those who were using them as pawns in a dangerous game that they were playing, actions and actions and attitudes similar To those from suffering from Stockholm Syndrome have also been found and victims of sexual abuse, human trafficking, terror, and political and religious oppression. I bring up Stockholm Syndrome because in a way, we can have this sort of unhealthy psychological bond with our regrets, or regrets can become kind of emotionally attached to us. And they become like things that we don't use in boxes in our garages. They're there, we don't know what's in them. But they take up room, they collect dust, and then when we move, we pay someone or we do it ourselves to move those boxes into the next house where they're going to sit in the garage, collect more dust, because we've grown in some sort of emotional attachment to them.

And that's what we do with our regrets not is not healthy.

We have to let go of our regrets. We have to release them we have to open up our hands no matter how uncomfortable that might make us. As we continue to learn about Paul's story. He He tells us how a believer and is challenged him by saying to Paul, he says, Now what are you waiting for? Get up and be baptized, wash your sins away calling on his name.

You see, Paul had a self actualization moment in which he realized that God's grace was immensely larger and bigger than any of the mistakes that he had and Anand is challenges him he says not only is God's grace big enough, but now you got to you got to release it to God, God's not gonna rip that thing out of your hands.

But you have to open it up. And so Paul goes and gets baptized.

And this was his way of releasing and it was his way of dying to himself. We talked about baptism as being symbolic of this death to self and being raised a new life in Christ. And perhaps the thing that we need to kill, metaphorically is that old part of ourselves that is hanging on to regrets so we can be born into new life again, without being held on today, we can make a different choice, we could release our regrets after we recognize them. Okay, final reason why this stuff is easy to understand by hard to live out, because it's easier to resist redemption, instead of redeeming our regrets and this is a profound point.

God isn't simply erasing your regrets. God isn't just canceling them, your memories not going to be swipes. If that was all God was doing, taking away our regrets and taking them off the record, then we would never learn from our regrets.

regrets without redemption, means that our regrets are always a setback. Okay, regrets without redemption means that every regret that you have is a setback. Whoops, I shouldn't have said that. Well, that's a setback. Whoops, I should have done that. That's a setback.

That person did horrible things to me. That's a setback. But it is not so with God because God redeems your regrets. God redeemed that God breathes new life into your life. Through your regrets. No regrets aren't a setback. But just like Paul, your regrets can be a launching pad to something better. It's not just a stumbling block. But rather, it's something that propels you into a better future, your pain can be leveraged to bringing hope and healing into a world that needs hope and healing. Can you imagine that in your own life?

Whoops, I shouldn't have done that. I regret that.

But now more more proactive person.

Man, I I really should have said something. But now I'll be an advocate for those who can't say something who can't speak for themselves. That person did horrible things to me.

But I am not the sum of what has been done to me. My value my worth has nothing to do what has been done to me but rather it is who God says I am. You see because God redeems regrets.

Those things aren't setbacks, what you said what you shouldn't have said what you did, what you shouldn't have done, what was done to you. Those are not setbacks anymore, but rather they're launching pads into health and healing and hope into the future. Think about that for a moment now.

Who in your life has a regret?

Who in your life, their life is being so defined by that regret?

Who in your life do you know is just hopeless and hurting?

Will you be a lion?

Will you be a bright light and let them know that God is the God who doesn't just erase regrets. He's isn't just the God who takes them off the record but He is the God who redeems regret.

I'm sure there were plenty of times in which Paul could have just said, you know, I'm a murderer. I've had people thrown in jail and tortured. God, you're, you're looking at the wrong guy. I've done too much bad, too many bad things. But God did not negotiate with Paul.

God did not negotiate with Paul's future. God said, this is the vision and the mission I have for you. And all of us who are listening today, who are followers of Jesus can trace our faith back to Paul, who starts churches for those who weren't Jewish, for the Gentiles for the rest of the world. Paul did that. And I'm certainly glad that Paul recognizes regrets that he released his regrets to God that He allowed God to redeem his regrets, because I don't know what my life would look like, and you don't know what your life would look like.

Without that, I just hear Paul over and over in his head saying, but God, they know that I killed people, but God they know, but God, they know. And God said, I don't care. We're doing this. Let me change your life.

God says to Paul, I refuse to let you stay in the sorry cycle.

I refuse to let you stay there.

And ignore your regrets. I refuse to let you stay there and hold on to your regrets. I refuse to let you stay there and think that your regrets are going to define the rest of your life. But rather, I'm going to do something amazing through you.

And he wants to do that with us today, in Madison, Wisconsin, and 2021. So instead of resisting the work that God wants to do in and through your life, will you let him redeem it.

And when the regrets of life, drag us back into the sorry, cycle.

Let's jump in the starting over loop. You see, this series isn't about how to avoid mistakes, how to avoid regrets. The truth is, is that you're going to have regrets you're going to still do things you shouldn't do and say things you shouldn't have done or miss opportunities, people are going to do terrible things to you.

There's going to be pain and suffering in your life. But what the series does provide are tools, that when bad things do happen, that they're not gonna hold you down anymore. So when regret happens in the future, whether that's next week, next year, next decade, when something happens, remember, to recognize your regret, than to release it to seek forgiveness when and wherever it is necessary. And then the like God, redeem your regrets bringing something good from them as only He can do.

See, the thing that we have to learn about starting over is that it's not just something that we do one time.

We're gonna do it multiple times. We're going to start over a lot. We're going to start over, over and over again.

Because learning to love your regrets, isn't just a one time decision. And living beyond your regrets is an everyday decision.

Eugene Peterson paraphrases the words of the prophet Jeremiah this way. He says, God's loyal love couldn't have run out. His merciful love couldn't have dried up. They're created new every morning. How great. Your faithfulness. I'm sticking with God. I say it over and over.

He's all I've got left.

What Jeremiah is telling you and me is that every morning as a new chance to experience God's love, that every day is a new chance to experience God's faithfulness.

That every breath that you take is a new chance to experience God's love and faithfulness.

And that's what it's like. This is what it looks like to choose to live in such a way.

The regrets are no longer the finish line. But the starting line when we live beyond our regrets, today can be the day that you start over. I'm not exaggerating. I'm not leading you on it is completely possible. David had an affair.

And he had the woman's why the woman's husband killed because David made her pregnant. Peter denied knowing Jesus three times in the moment that Jesus needed his friendship the most. Paul murdered and tortured more Greg was an addict. I beat up a kid.

Granted I was a kid when that happened, important detail, but we all have regrets. And yet all of us were able to start over and you can start over to maybe like David, you've been unfaithful to a partner. Maybe like Peter, you've been selfish in a bad friend. Perhaps it's murder or hatred or an addiction.

Perhaps it's something you said perhaps it's something you wish you said. Perhaps it was something that was done to us.

But most likely your regrets are a combination of action, inaction and reaction that have happened over the course of your life. And it's time to stop seeing those and treating those as a setback.

And to take the first step into the launching pad, and just start over to learn to love your regrets, and to learn to live beyond them. If you have never committed your life to Christ, this is the first step in doing what we're talking about.

You see, to face have the courage to face and recognize our regrets have the courage to release the regrets. We need Jesus.

We cannot it is impossible for you and I to redeem our regrets on our own. We need God. And if you're watching church online, right now, in the chat room, a box is popping up. And it's gonna say do you commit your life to Jesus? And if yes, click that box.

Perhaps you have committed yourself to Jesus, but you've drifted away for whatever reason make today that you recommit to him the pandemic started over a year ago. And I know what happens is, your church goes online and small groups go online and and you slowly start to drift and get disconnected and disengage. And what happens is eventually, it's not just Christian community that you're missing. It's not just the church, but it's you're disconnected from God, make today the day that you recommit to God, you may click the same box that's in the chat room, you'll have an opportunity to receive prayer, and I hope that you will, because that is powerful. What one of our hosts or staff members, pray with you and for you today.

Today is the day to start over whether it's your first time starting over or your 100th time starting over God's love and faithfulness are new every single morning. You can start over